Simulating the Time Lag Effect of Oil Product Price on its Demand with SWARM

There is time lag between domestic oil product price and international oil price. The speculation caused by such time lag in domestic oil product market has great disturbance on domestic oil product demand. That is, the domestic oil product would be in short supply when international oil price rose. Otherwise, it would be unmarketable. Through SWARM, three category of oil product consumer agents were designed, one elementary consumer agent and two speculator agents. Two speculator agents have different ways to make their expected price on domestic oil product. One speculator agent gets the expected price based on its memory of oil product price and the other gets the price through the time lag between the domestic oil product price and the international oil price. The results showed that the time lag between the domestic oil product price and the international oil price would stimulate the speculation in oil product market, which would disturb the domestic oil product demand seriously.